Friday, April 8, 2016

Does the Three-Eyed Crow crow have his own agenda for Westeros which may not align with what Bran intends with his powers?

I leans towards 'yes: he has his own agenda.' But I also lean towards 'no--he does not have EVIL intentions."
But I think he may view Bran as collateral damage, a tool to be used in the Great Battle against the Enemy.  No matter what the cost.
I think that he's a man that will do whatever it takes to get things done. And an oathkeeper, ultimately.

There's clearly some ambiguity going on in Bran's ADWD chapters...from the piles of animal and human bones littering the cave of the Children of the Forest, to the creepy weirwood paste with it's veins of red, it's constant symbology of sacrifice, the lost and desperate states of Jojen and Meera, along with Bran's seeming inability to care....
Not to mention Bloodraven.
There's something decidedly creepy about Bloodraven. This is nothing new...let's face it: albino sorcerers who can possibly possess humans, have one blood-red eye, a magic bow and arrow and are reputed to see everything that happens tend towards the creepy.
And he's even creepier now...a hundred and twenty years old, little more than a skeleton, with a weirwood tree literally growing through his body and out his eye, claws for fingers, his voice a paper-thin whisper.......
But you know, if Sansa's chapters have taught us anything, it's that we ought to know better than to look on the surface.

When we look at Bloodraven's history, I honestly find it hard to characterize him as 'good' or 'bad.'
One thing he was, though, is effective.
Whether as a warrior, as Master off Whispers or as Hand of the King, or as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. 
He wasn't necessarily always honorable; he was a kinslayer; he broke guest right. Both are major no-nos in WEsteros. But one could argue that  he did what had to be done.
The thing is,  he definitely kept his oath to his half-brother, the King(and his successors). 
And if the half-brother he fought against to defend his half-brother the king was his ancestral enemy, still. He was loyal to the end. 
Sent away to the Wall for a crime that was been a total affront to law and custom(murdering Aenys Blackfyre while he was travelling under Bloodravens' own protection of safe conduct.) but which Bloodraven probably viewed as a necessary evil.
A nice guy he was not; creepy, capable of cruelty, Machiavellian.... but he was loyal. And maybe he had reasons we don't even know about.

So he was sent to the Wall, where he took another oath and eventually became Lord Commander before disappearing into the Wild.
So,  here we have a man who broke the kinslaying law and the oathbreaking law, whom the realm feared for decades; whose name still has the power to spook people in Westeros...supernaturally kept alive and living in a cave stacked with a bunch of bones.
But it's the oath that gets me. He swore an oath to 'protect the realms of men.' And although he may be unscrupulous, is he so unscrupulous as to forsake his oath? History would suggest the opposite:  that he is an oathkeeper.
So I don't believe he's somehow in league with the Others or that his plans are necessarily EVIL.
That doesn't mean that Bran isn't in trouble.
That doesn't mean that he's not using Bran or that Bran is in good hands.

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